


cut it out and then restart

by flibbertygigget



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood and Injury, Gen, Morality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-21
Updated: 2018-03-21
Packaged: 2019-04-05 14:54:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14046702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flibbertygigget/pseuds/flibbertygigget
Summary: Harry behaves a little more like an all-loving hero. Dumbledore continues to be dubious.





	cut it out and then restart

**Author's Note:**

> I recently re-read DH, and I was once again struck by how callous both Harry and Dumbledore are in the stupid King's Cross Limbo scene. So here's how I thought it should have gone, including, hey, Harry actually acknowledging all the shit that he learned from Snape's memories.

Harry sat up. His body, though unscathed, was naked. He touched his face. He was not wearing glasses anymore.

A noise reached him through the unformed nothingness. There were the soft thumpings of something that struggled as though in pain. There was a low whine, ripping from a half-choked throat.

Harry turned slowly on the spot until he spotted the thing that was making the noises. It had the form of a small, naked child, curled on the ground, its skin raw and flayed. It shuddered under a bench, looking for all the world as though it had been stuffed out of sight like a shameful secret. As Harry watched, it curled in on itself, struggling for breath.

He was afraid of it. Small and fragile and wounded though it was, he didn't want to approach it. It whimpered again, and Harry felt a rush of shame. Hadn't Dumbledore always said that the thing that would defeat Voldemort, the thing that separated Harry from that monster was his ability to love? And here Harry was, too afraid to go help the suffering creature. _You're a Gryffindor_ , Harry thought fiercely. _Act like it!_  He drew slowly nearer, near enough to touch it. He reached out a hand, but he hesitated. He didn't want to hurt it further.

"You cannot help."

He spun around. Albus Dumbledore was walking towards him, sprightly and upright, wearing sweeping robes of midnight blue. For a moment Harry couldn't breathe. He had walked into the Forbidden Forest willingly, knowing what would happen to him and why it was necessary, but it hadn't really struck him until that moment what that meant.

"Harry." Dumbledore spread his arms wide, but Harry held himself back. Touching Dumbledore would make it all far too real. "You wonderful boy. You brave, brave man. Let us walk."

Dumbledore began to stride away, but Harry hesitated. He looked back at the flayed child, and he wished that he had something to swaddle it in. In an instant a dark robe appeared on the bench. Harry blinked. Was the afterlife some kind of Room of Requirement, then? And, if so, could he summon healing potions and dittany for the child? Harry picked up the robe and wrapped it around the child as best he could, wincing slightly at the way it cried out when he brushed it too hard.

"Harry, you cannot help." Harry glanced over his shoulder. Dumbledore was some distance from him, looking at him with a strange expression that Harry had never seen before. "Come. Sit." Harry hefted the child into his arms as gently as possible. One small, bloodied hand reached up to grab at Harry's chest weakly. Harry remembered how Snape had reached for him in the dying man's final moments, and in a rush he knew that he was doing the right thing. He walked over to Dumbledore, sitting down across from the man.

"You're dead," said Harry.

"Yes," said Dumbledore. He was trying to seem matter-of-fact, but Harry couldn't help but notice how the old man was carefully averting his eyes from the child in Harry's arms.

"Then I'm dead, too."

"Ah," said Dumbledore. "That is the question, isn't it? On the whole, dear boy, I think not." Harry gritted his teeth. He had forgotten, in his grief and uncertainty, just how annoying talking to Dumbledore could be.

"That doesn't make sense," Harry said. "I'm either one or the other, and if you're here-" He broke off, frustrated. "Explain."

"But you already know," said Dumbledore. He twiddled his thumbs together.

"I let him kill me," Harry said.

"You did," said Dumbledore, nodding. "Go on."

"So the horcrux inside me is gone?"

"Yes, he destroyed it. Your soul is whole, and completely your own, Harry."

"But then..." The child in his arms whimpered, and Harry rubbed circles into its back soothingly. "Then I should be dead. I had to die for the horcrux to be destroyed. That's what you told Snape." Dumbledore beamed.

"And yet you are not. You have a choice." Harry looked down at the child in his arms. It had long ago stopped trembling and whimpering, and was now looking up at him with large, dark eyes.

"Who is this, Professor?" Harry said at last.

"Something that is beyond either of our help," said Dumbledore.

"It - He - Does he have a name?" Harry said. _Names are important_ , he thought vaguely. He had always hated being called freak or boy or The Boy Who Lived. Voldemort had chosen to shed his old self like snakeskin.

"Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and most of all those who live without love."

"But I'm not dead, not really. So-"

"Harry, you cannot help."

"Why not?" The child flinched in his arms, and Harry started rocking back and forth. He had never held a baby before. He didn't know if he was doing this right, but he had to do _something_ , and at least the child seemed to be calming.

"Your mercy does you credit, but it is too late for it."

"He's just a kid. How could it be too late?"

"Its choices were made in life. In death..."

"But I'm making choices right now. _You're_ making choices right now. Besides, what kind of horrible choices could justify _this_?"

"Harry, I think you know what it is." Harry looked down at the child in his arms.

"He ended up here," he said slowly. "He ended up with me. That means he must be-" He broke off, arms instinctively tightening around the child. "He's the horcrux, isn't he?"

"Yes. The Killing Curse worked differently than the other methods of destroying a horcrux. Instead of destroying the soul fragment utterly, it simply removed it from its container - that is to say, from you."

"Oh." He should be disgusted. Hadn't he been disgusted when Voldemort had made it so the same blood flowed through both their veins? Hadn't he been disgusted when he found out that part of him was and always had been Voldemort, for as long as he could remember? Hell, he'd even been disgusted when he'd first seen the child, flayed and bloody and helpless, so helpless...

Maybe that made all the difference. Those other things had been Voldemort's fault, but this - it still was, but it also wasn't, not really. This was just a part of Voldemort, just like Harry had always had part of Voldemort. This child was just-

"So you see now, Harry, why there's nothing you can do to help." Harry looked up from the child, meeting Dumbledore's eyes. He'd always thought of those eyes as piercing, as wise, but he couldn't think of them in those terms, not now.

"Professor, why are you trying to convince me that I can't help?" Harry said slowly. "I mean, maybe I can't - save him, or whatever. But I can at least try to _help_ him." He looked back down at the child, who was snuggling into his chest contentedly. "I think I already have, a little. He isn't crying anymore."

"Harry, the only way for Voldemort's soul to live without manifesting as _this_ is for him to experience remorse, true remorse. That is impossible."

"I'm sorry, sir, but did you ever give him a reason to try?"

"What do you mean, my dear boy?"

"I mean," Harry said, standing up suddenly, "that you were the one who told him that he was a wizard. You were the one who was supposed to - to guide him to his new life at Hogwarts, like Hagrid did with me. And Hagrid wasn't perfect, but he took me to Diagon Alley. He told me about things that confused me there. He bought me Hedwig, my first real gift in - in my entire life. What did you do for Tom Riddle?" Harry didn't know what he was saying. It seemed like all the doubts that had been growing in the back of his mind had finally reached maturation, bursting from his mouth like blooming flowers. Dumbledore was staring at him, apparently unable to believe that Harry could have ever entertained doubts about him, and somehow that just made Harry more mad.

"Harry-"

"I'll tell you what you did," he said. "You listened to the stories other people told about him before you even met him. You made him think that you were going to burn everything he owned in order to make a point. And the worst part of it is that you didn't even try to listen to him. It's like - like every time my teachers used to believe Dudley or Aunt Petunia over me. Why _would_ he want to trust you, to let you guide him at Hogwarts? And you - you had already made up your mind, hadn't you? You'd already given up on him, just like you gave up on-" Harry's arms tightened around the child in his arms.

"Harry, you remember what you saw in my memory. Even as a child, Tom Riddle had no empathy for his fellows. He tortured animals; he hurt and stole from his supposed friends. And when he came to Hogwarts, it took no time at all for him to have all his teachers besides myself wrapped around his finger."

"But then why didn't you try to help or stop him? You had two options, Professor, but instead you just stood to the side and-" Harry's words died in his throat as he realized. "And that was what you always did, really. You stood to the side when Grindelwald was rampaging across Europe because you couldn't face him. You stood to the side when Tom Riddle was at Hogwarts in spite of your suspicions. Even with Professor Snape... you didn't do anything for him or for any of the other Slytherins, even though you had to know that Voldemort was recruiting and they didn't have any reason not to choose him."

"You have no idea - I was trying to counter Voldemort, I had no time for boys whose hearts were already lost."

"If you didn't have time to do your job, _Headmaster_ , you should have stepped down and let Professor McGonagall take over as Headmistress," Harry said. "I used to think that you were brave, but I guess I was mistaken. A true Gryffindor would have been able to do something, anything. It didn't have to be perfect, but almost anything would have been better than just... giving in. Being complacent. Maybe if you'd tried-"

"I tried, Harry. Believe me, I tried. I will admit, I was a coward with Grindelwald, but I learned my lesson back then. Do not blame me for the mistakes of the Death Eaters. Their choices are, and always have been, their own."

"Choices are made for reasons, Professor," Harry said. "Professor Snape-"

"Severus made his choices," Dumbledore said. Harry shivered. He had only heard the man use that tone once before - when he had told a young Severus Snape that he was disgusted with him.

"Yeah, he did," Harry said. "And he made mistakes, but he gave me his memories, Professor. You can't say that he didn't own up to those mistakes. You can't say that he didn't do all in his power to make up for the wrong he'd done. And for him to be loyal to you, after what you made him do, after all you'd done to him... I don't know how he did it. I know I certainly couldn't have."

"There are some marks that cannot be erased, Harry. The Dark Arts, the Unforgivables..."

"I've heard that before, Professor. From Moody - or Barty Crouch Jr. But I have to disagree."

"Harry-"

"I've used the Imperius. I've used the Cruciatus. I'm probably going to have to use the Killing Curse, because, oh, right, I have to kill Voldemort. I _owe_ it to everyone who died in this war."

"Harry..."

"No. I can't believe you, Professor, not anymore." Harry looked down at the child, who was sleeping in his arms. "I'm not some kind of - of pure victim. I've done terrible things, no matter how I justified it at the time. And so did you, and so did Voldemort, and so did Professor Snape. All I can do is try and end this war so that nobody has to do horrible things to survive ever again. All I can do is choose - and keep choosing. Professor Snape taught me that, at least."

"If you choose to go back, you will have to leave Voldemort's soul piece behind."

"I know." Harry silently wished for Murtlap essence, for dittany, for whatever healing potions would help. A small table, heavy with bottles and jars, appeared a few feet from him. Harry dragged his chair over to it and sat down. "But that doesn't mean I won't do what I can. That's all I can do."

He unwrapped the child and slowly set to work.


End file.
